The Balanced Clarinet Choir: A Conversation with Harvey Hermann and Mitchell Estrin
by Margaret Thornhill
Harvey Hermann is passionate about large clarinet choirs."What is more beautiful than the sound of 35 clarinet players all playing pianissimo in unison?" Hermann asks, rhetorically. "People say that the string sound of a symphony orchestra is beautiful, but the sound of a large group of clarinets, it's gorgeous! Nothing more beautiful!"
Hermann spent over 30 years developing and conducting the renowned clarinet choir at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 1965 through the 90's. Now retired from the University, he is an invited guest conductor of clarinet ensembles for schools and festivals, including ICA ClarinetFests and, since its founding in 2005, the massed choir at the annual Buffet/Vandoren USA Clarinet Ensemble Festival. He is also a very busy private teacher of clarinet -- down to 40 from 88 private students in the 1960's. It was that peak of 88 students that helped set his clarinet choir life in motion, as he sought ensemble opportunities for his students.
“I had to work my butt off, with no support from the University—until we had developed an international reputation,” Hermann observes. “To start, I bought secondhand (harmony) clarinets out of my own pocket and had them overhauled. I started putting (students) into up to five ensembles on Sunday afternoons and the large clarinet sound just took off.”
The sound Harvey Hermann had in his ear was a concept he calls “balanced”: a clarinet choir with a sweet, light treble, rich inner voices, and a strong bass. Most of the players are concentrated in the lower range. A good way of representing this sound is to imagine “a Christmas tree, or an upside down V.” His pet peeve is a shrill soprano; he believes that firsts and E-flats need to be encouraged to play lightly and blend with each other, not to play the way they might as solo woodwinds in an orchestra. Harvey considers the clarinet the "most offensive instrument when it comes to playing too loud in the upper register" and hears this problem not just in young students, but college students and even professionals who haven't attained the level of the great symphony players. "What I wanted in a clarinet choir was "bottom," he summarizes.
Much depends on a strong alto clarinet section, that all-important middle voice. "It's a myth that you can't play alto clarinet in tune. You have to learn any instrument to play it in tune. When you listen and adjust, it becomes obvious that you can play in tune." Harvey favors arrangements that have an optional 4th soprano clarinet part doubling alto. Sopranos can play "95% as low as the alto" so this is a successful doubling. The sound of the alto masks the "harshness" of the soprano. Nowadays, he includes basset as one of the altos.
At UIUC, Hermann's choirs ranged around 30 or more players, with parts typically distributed as follows: 2 E-flat; 3 first, 4 second, 6 thirds, 4 or 5 alto clarinets, 4 basses and 2 contras. He adds string bass to the lowest part and often added tympani to "aid with rhythm" in symphonic transcriptions. A group that he took to Paris, France, called for 34 players: 2 E-flats, 4 firsts, 7 seconds, 7 thirds, five altos, 4 basses, 2 E-flat contra, 2 B-flat contra and string bass.
Hermann's ideal is somewhat more difficult to achieve with a smaller group. I asked him what he would consider a balanced instrumentation for 15 players. He hesitated and then came up with:
1 E-flat, 2 firsts, 2 seconds, 3 thirds, 3 altos (which could be shared with soprano clarinets, depending on range), 2 basses and 2 contras. Among University groups in the US that follow his concept, "Mitchell Estrin's group (at the University of Florida) is at the top of the list. But I'm always telling him to add another bass!"
Mitch Estrin, a Juilliard grad who spent 20 years as a successful New York symphonic and recording musician, is now clarinet professor at the University of Florida, a position he accepted in 1999. Estrin has a 30 member clarinet choir there, including 18 current clarinet performance majors, who are required to participate. "The clarinet choir is an important part of the curriculum," Estrin states. In fact, he strongly believes that all his performance majors need to learn auxiliary clarinets so that they can get a head start on their orchestral skills. He counts Harvey Hermann a good friend and a great inspiration, who gave him much advice in the start-up years of his University clarinet choir program. Estrin is also founder of the annual Buffet/Vandoren USA Clarinet Ensemble Festival, where Hermann has been a regular guest conductor.
"Harvey is a fantastic musician with a wealth of knowledge about the clarinet choir. His LP's from the 60's and 70's are without equal. The musicianship and nuance on these live recordings is amazing. He is a living history of the clarinet choir and the last of the great masters of the balanced clarinet choir movement (of the 1950's and 60's)," Estrin writes, "a number of prominent clarinet performers and educators including Thomas Ayres, Lucien Cailliet, James De Jesu, Russell Howland, Donald McCathren, Harold Palmer and Alfred Reed..."
Harvey himself demurs somewhat about his place in this lineup. “Mitch has done quite a bit of research.” But when asked to compare himself to Bellison's famous 75 member group which gave their last concerts in 1938, he makes firm comparisons. “Bellison's clarinet players played the string parts (from) the orchestra, but added "color" instruments. I went a step further.”
The step Hermann is referring to is his lasting legacy to the world of clarinet choirs: a remarkable library of transcriptions of major symphonic literature. In response to the need for more high quality repertoire for large clarinet choir, Hermann and “17 to 20” different students and colleagues—including Dan Freeman, Jim Moffit and others—produced an amazing collection of several hundred new transcriptions over a thirty year period. Hermann served as mentor to his student arrangers, meeting with them to discuss the aesthetics of transcription: tessitura, texture and appropriate reassignment of the parts, and advising them on what compositions were most appropriate choices. Originally not for publication, many of these works are now available for purchase. More information, a catalogue and instructions for ordering may be found online at http://clarinetchoir.dfapam.com
Hermann is quick to note that his Illinois scores are painstakingly authentic: they transcribe “all the notes of the orchestra.” In general, with clarinet choir transcriptions “you lose the tone color of the various orchestral instruments,” but you can “compensate for this by picking pieces with contrasts in style and tempo” that take the place of the variations in color: “short movements, movements with various stylistic changes, sudden changes in expression.” Although movements in especially difficult keys for clarinet may have been transposed a whole or half step to render them more playable, he is sensitive to keeping works intended for bright or dark sonorities in close relation to their original range.
Estrin's large clarinet choir library at the University of Florida includes 50 of Hermann's charts. “These are fantastic arrangements. All of the parts are interesting and challenging--not watered down. For example, in the Overture to Oberon, the original solo clarinet part is given to clarinet 3. The writing for harmony clarinets is characteristic of the instruments in a way that most arrangements aren't, because Harvey knows them so well.” Among Estrin's favorites are overtures such as Weber's Der Freischütz and Mendelssohn's Fingal's Cave. One of Hermann's most popular arrangements is Rossini's overture to The Barber of Seville. An excellent performance is featured in the UF Clarinet Choir CD, The Wind in the Reeds, Mark Masters, 2006. http://www.arts.ufl.edu/music/clarinet/sound.html.
Mitch Estrin is also quick to point out that Hermann's transcriptions really do call for large groups of very able players: “Many of the scores have divisi alto, since Harvey's choirs had 5 on a part, or divisi E-flat clarinet: really too much for a smaller group.” Fingal's Cave, which U. Florida hopes to record, is a case in point: a work which calls for an exceptionally skilled bass section and 5 divisi clarinet parts.
When asked to pick his desert island favorites from his proprietary transcriptions, Harvey is hard pressed. “They are all good.” But he eventually singles out works such as: Haydn's Finale to Symphony #88; Bach's Little Fugue; Cesar Franck's Symphony in D minor; Dvorak's New World Symphony; Massenet's Angelus; Weber's Overture to Euryanthe; Mozart's Symphony #38; and Schubert's 5th Symphony, among others. A great fan of the Schubert, Hermann is fond of saying: “Schubert left out the clarinets, but we got even!” Among the many concerti in his collection, he has fond memories of Russ Dagon performing the Krommer clarinet concerto in Ohio in the early 80's, and the bass clarinet transcription of the Mozart Bassoon Concerto, which Hermann conducted in 1987 with Lawrie Bloom as soloist.
The largest clarinet choir Hermann has ever conducted was around 120 players at a clarinet festival sponsored by the University of Illinois. His recording of Schubert's 5th Symphony is an example of a large group (he remembers 60 to 80 players) that had only two days of rehearsal. A relatively low-fidelity digital transfer from what must be an amazing LP original is available at http://clarinetchoir.dfapam.com —along with other “must hear” sound links. Clark Brody, one of Hermann's own teachers, on hearing this recording asked, “how do you ever get so many clarinetists to play so well in tune?” Hermann says he just makes them listen to what they are doing.
“I'm just a horse's ass in rehearsals!” Hermann says, laughing. “It drives me nuts to hear clarinets played badly. But I don't cuss at them—yet!” He runs his rehearsals like music lessons.
“You ask me what the most important things are to teach: tone and rhythm. I work my students for hours on a slow movement, but they learn to love it. I don't smile much, but I take them seriously. I teach my beginners long tones. Before they even start to read music I teach them upbeats and downbeats.
In my conducting, it's all detail work. I teach them to bring out the moving notes and cut back on the long notes. I teach them to hold notes out full value. I crescendo to the appoggiaturas, press into the dissonance. The biggest mistake is not to crescendo over the barline at the end of the measure. When you conduct accents, you don't make the accent louder by playing it louder, you cut everything else down, take away volume from the other notes.”
When asked what advice he might give to conductors starting clarinet choirs, Harvey Hermann replies: “Balance the instrumentation. Choose literature that is interesting to everyone in the ensemble. Tell the high clarinets to pipe down!” But he recommends clarinet choirs to all University clarinet teachers as an opportunity to develop significant ensemble skills for their students and develop proficiency on harmony clarinets.
With such a long career of clarinet choir concerts, I thought it might be hard for Harvey Hermann to name one of his most unforgettable conducting experiences, but the answer was immediate: “Paris, France, 1980.” Guy de Plus invited him to bring his choir to the ICA ClarinetFest held at the City University of Paris. The work chosen was Der Freischütz. In this transcription, alto and bass clarinets take the part of the horn quartet featured in the original. “Guy de Plus asked all his students to be present in the audience. Beautiful.”
Copyright 2008 Margaret Thornhill. All Rights Reserved. A version of this article appeared in the March, 2009, issue of The Clarinet.
